Bud Cummins – Memphis Flyer

Laymen (heck, reporters too) sometimes confuse the various kinds of attorneys general in the U.S. Justice Department.

There is the attorney general of the United States in Washington, D.C. That would be, most recently, Alberto Gonzales, who took office in 2005 and resigned this week.

There is the United States attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, a position appointed by the president. That would be David Kustoff.

And there are assistant United States attorneys in each state. Some of them are career prosecutors. That would include Tim DiScenza, who prosecuted and convicted John Ford and the Tennessee Waltz defendants.

Then there is Bud Cummins.

Cummins used to be the U.S. attorney in Little Rock. He came over to Memphis a few years ago and prosecuted former Shelby County medical examiner O.C. Smith. But his real claim to fame is getting fired by Karl Rove, adviser to President George Bush.

Cummins is one of the “fired U.S. attorneys” that cost Gonzales his job. He was asked to quit on June 5th, 2006, so that former Rove aide J. Timothy Griffin could take his place. He left last December, and he started appearing on CNN early in 2007, when Democrats went public with their charges that Bush and Rove were trying to politically influence the Justice Department. Cummins is a Republican, but he was deemed less politically useful than Griffin, who has since been replaced, too.

Cummins heard about the Gonzales resignation Monday morning.

“I can honestly say I don’t take any personal satisfaction in it,” he told the Flyer this week.

“It’s a sad story,” Cummins said. “There are probably a thousand reasons to admire Gonzales but also a great number of reasons to be disappointed in him. That cost him his credibility in a job where credibility is mandatory.”

Cummins, now working as a consultant in Arkansas, declined to speak about Tennessee Waltz because he is not familiar with the facts in much detail. But he doesn’t think the prosecutions of Ford and others are tainted.

“I know the quality of the professionals actually pursuing the individual investigations,” he said. “I am not concerned that whatever political pressure was brought to bear has caused professional prosecutors to deviate from the nonpartisan pursuit of cases. But it has created an appearance of impropriety. And career professionals are paying a price for that.”

Cummins said he never had any contact with Gonzales before or after June 2006, when he was notified that he was being replaced.

So, does that suggest that the attorney general of the United States and the president and his advisers take a hands-off approach to U.S. attorneys in Tennessee and Arkansas? No, it does not. That would defy common practice and common sense.

Kustoff, who replaced Terry Harris in 2005 after Tennessee Waltz broke in the news, is a former Bush campaign organizer in Tennessee. It is common practice for presidents to appoint U.S. attorneys from their own political party, but they generally do it at the beginning of their terms, not in the middle.

Common sense suggests that back in 2003, when the Tennessee Waltz began, the attorney general (John Ashcroft at the time) was apprised of a sting operation targeting state lawmakers in Tennessee. And that Gonzales was apprised when most of them turned out to be black Democrats.

At a press conference following the Ford sentencing, DiScenza said he has had no personal contact with Gonzales. Kustoff and the FBI special agent in charge, My Harrison, wouldn’t say whether they were in contact with Gonzales or his assistants. They all said Ford’s pending federal trial in Nashville is “not our case.”

But that case cuts to the heart of Ford’s consulting business with TennCare providers, and that is a matter of great local interest.

The public deserves better answers. As Cummins said, there is an appearance of impropriety. Memphis does not exist in a vacuum apart from Nashville and Washington. And the feds are short-changing us on the story.

John Branston is a Flyer senior editor.

Memphians might remember Bud Cummins as the federal prosecutor who came over from Little Rock two years ago to try the strange case of former Shelby County medical examiner Dr. O.C. Smith.

Last week, Cummins was in the national news on another strange case — the case of the fired federal prosecutors who were purged by the U.S. Justice Department under President Bush. Under subpoena and the bright lights of C-SPAN, Cummins and five other former prosecutors testified before House and Senate committees in Washington.

In an exclusive interview with the Flyer, Cummins talked about the “painful process.” A lifelong Republican, he served as U.S. attorney in Little Rock for five years, until he was notified last June that he was being replaced in December.

“This is the kind of thing you convince yourself only happens in the other party,” he said. “But the truth is, from time to time it is no longer a question of party, it is a question of right or wrong.”

Cummins said he was not questioning the right of the president and attorney general to replace federal prosecutors, but he resents the way it was done.

“The way they chose to implement the decisions was incompetent,” he said. “The way they have attempted to defend themselves to Congress has been unfair to some of the individuals involved.”

Cummins told the congressional committees that “a senior Justice Department official warned him on February 20th that the fired prosecutors should remain quiet about their dismissals.” Cummins said he was warned that administration officials would “pull their gloves off and offer public criticisms to defend their actions more fully.”

Cummins was fired in order to provide a job for Tim Griffin, a former aide to Bush adviser Karl Rove and an opposition researcher for the Republican Party. Cummins told the Flyer that the heavy-handedness creates an impression of political interference that will be hard to combat.

“Once you lose your credibility, people start second-guessing every decision you make,” he said.

He added that he is grateful to President Bush for the opportunity to be a U.S. attorney and “not critical at all for him giving someone else that opportunity. That is the nature of the job. You can be up there throwing strikes, but if the manager takes the ball from you, that is the way it goes. Ultimately, it’s the manager’s call.”

As a prosecutor, Cummins and colleague Patrick Harris showed guts in trying the O.C. Smith case after local prosecutors either passed on it or recused themselves because of their working relationship with the medical examiner. Smith was accused of staging a bizarre incident in which he was found bound with barbed wire and a homemade bomb outside his office. The government elected not to retry the case, although Cummins said he was prepared to do so.

At trial, Cummins had to deal with several witnesses from the police department and district attorney general’s office who were protecting Smith, whose lawyers claimed he was attacked and bound by a lone assailant. Smith did not take the stand. His alleged attacker is still at large but has not struck again.

In an interview with the Flyer in 2005, Cummins defended Bush and the attorney general as “absolutely intolerant of prosecutors engaging in political activity of any kind. If you can’t leave politics at the door, you shouldn’t come here or you won’t last.”

In hindsight, he gave his bosses too much credit.

The purge of federal prosecutors is especially troubling for Memphis and unfair to U.S. attorney David Kustoff and assistant U.S. attorney Tim Discenza. Even though all the Memphis and Shelby County politicians indicted so far in Tennessee Waltz and Main Street Sweeper have been black Democrats, Kustoff, Discenza, and FBI agent in charge My Harrison have promised to be nonpolitical. Since the investigations are ongoing, they deserve to be taken at their word. But the treatment of Cummins and his seven colleagues makes that hard to do.